this review will contain massive SPOILERS.
i watched clannad first and didn't care for it; i felt it was mostly manipulative fakery accompanied by some juvenile comedy. under normal circumstances i wouldn't watch the sequel, but since it is even more highly rated and i am on a quest to watch the 500 top-rated anime of all times, i watched it anyway.
unfortunately, this was also a miss for me, if for different reasons. first of all, the sound was worse; the BGM very repetitive, and the ED a jarring contrast to many episodes. if sound is bad, it constantly rubs my nerves the wrong way. on the positive side, some of what i especially disliked about clannad is better here: for part of the anime the story feels more genuine. but then the creators decided to either be the biggest trolls ever, or they turned from master manipulators into tone-deaf idiots. WHAT THE HELL IS WITH THAT ENDING!?
throughout the show, i kept being particularly interested in the mysterious story about the girl and the mechanical doll put together from junk. the mood was very evocative, and the art beautiful. i kept feeling there was something serious and meaningful here. there was. but the creators managed to ruin it in one fell swoop. in any case, this was a brilliant idea that clearly turned out much too ambitious for the writer, who could neither interlace it better so we would get progressively more clues, nor resolve it without leaving one giant turd with fly sparkles in place of its sad beauty.
alright, from the top. the first few arcs were mostly the same as the prequel; we get some back story on some people who're then cast off -- visual game adaptation is hard, sez barbie. the art and animation seemed slightly better to me, though i still find the females' character designs creepy. and once again i dispute that this is a "slice of life" anime; real gangs don't act like this by any stretch of the imagination; nevermind the supernatural elements, and the bottomless idiocy of sunohara. his supposed comic relief made me cringe.
then the part started that i liked a lot better, and which could qualify as "slice of life" and "coming of age", and where we see a lot of character development: tomoya graduates and starts working. this is very detailed and well done. nagisa also grows, and stops being a total crybaby. oh, how i wish the entire anime had this sort of feel to it. i also like that the harem disappears entirely, and the story features only tomoya and nagisa's romance. the downside to that is that the characters one might have invested some interest in are totally sidelined to only appear once or twice; they might have as well not existed. i guess despite allegedly valuing those school friendships, "family" in clannad does not include close friends. too bad.
the romance is extremely puritanical (these two blush when just holding hands even after getting married; which century are we in exactly?), but i believe love comes in many different guises, and sex can very easily be only a small part of romantic love (or indeed be absent entirely). not all love is grand and fierily passionate, some is quiet and soothing. these two have quiet and soothing down pat. i like their relationship, it's mutually supportive, and completely lacking of stupid misunderstandings so often used to create drama -- well, this show does not need any extra drama, so thanks for that. even though nagisa takes on a more traditional role as housewife, she is never seen as inferior. these two are equals; tomoya helps out with chores without having to be nagged, and when nagisa wants to work outside the home, he is only worried about her health, and there is nothing macho in his concern.
alas the story frays here. in fact, nagisa working as a waitress breaks the suspension of disbelief for me, because this girl has been so sick that she's had to repeat her senior year of high school twice now, and she's supposed to be working as a waitress? slice of life, my hairy white a** -- waitressing is hard work; on your feet all day running around carrying heavy trays. no, this bit is added solely to add fanservice because nagisa gets dressed in a maid outfit and her daddy drools over her. i cannot stand this pseudo-incestual crap in anime. it cheapens the character of akio, and it makes light of nagisa's illness.
from here on out i have trouble sorting feelings based in cultural beliefs from my feelings about the story as written. nagisa wants a baby. people do worry about her health, but, what i'd want to have happen is for somebody to seriously talk with her about alternatives such as adoption. nobody ever asks whether she has thought about what it would mean for tomoya (and for the baby) if she died in childbirth. we see nothing from her that indicates any concerns for that. as written, it feels seriously irresponsible to me, and nagisa's character loses any possible development. but for all i know adoption might be unpopular/taboo in japan because society values ancestral lineage. anyway, the writing is on the wall, and covered in red spider lilies.
so, nagisa dies. ushio, the baby lives. tomoya becomes his father, or rather, he becomes worse than his father: he abandons his child and sinks into grief.
for 5 years. dear creators, you have just killed all my affection for tomoya, and why? because you wanted to jerk my emotion around some more later. unforgivable.
i understand grief. i have lost my partner. i know that bottomless abyss will seek to suck you in and never let you go. but i didn't abandon my dog, nevermind an infant. being an adult means you cannot abnegate all responsibility when you're hurt. since this is a story about family, let me say loud and clear that leaving tomoya to rot for 5 years is not what family and friends do. what the creators have done here is ruin my affection not just for tomoya, but for everyone involved. akio and sanae raise ushio (ok, praiseworthy), entirely without tomoya's input, and 5 years later, when ushio is appropriately cute and can talk, they throw them together one day out of the blue, without backup, without warning. manipulative drama; this is NOT how a good family acts.
but wait, there's more. on the arranged trip tomoya takes with his ueber-cute daughter, he runs into his paternal grandmother for apparently the first time ever, who tells him the touching story of how his father came to be such an apparent loser and crappy father. some family -- where the hell was his grandmother all these years when tomoya felt he had nobody, and developed only disdain for his father? telling him the story could have done some good when he was a teenager. that's what decent family would have done. but no, here every bit of suffering has to be milked for maximum tear jerking gain.
i scoffed at how this was done, but i was relieved, because i thought, ok, tomoya will go back home and reunite with his dad, now that he understands from first hand experience what he must have gone through, and they can all live together with ueber-cute ushio; lessons learned harshly, but hey, learned at last. family actually means something, and you should talk things out instead of walking away.
but no. we clearly haven't been milked of all possible tears yet. ushio must die too. why tomoya blames the city instead of the writer, i can't know. me, i blame the writer.
and then guess what? in some terminally tortured way the story of the lonely girl with the mechanical doll is resolved to magically pushes a giant reset button and tomoya gets to live happily ever after with nagisa and ushio.
ack, ptui, spit. i would rate this a 1 if that would punish the creators. the ending totally undermines tomoya's development, and the story of everyone who has conquered grief to continue living a worthwhile life. it is a cheap deus ex machina plot to give a sugary sweet ending to go with the sugary moe character design. you can do this in a game as one possible ending, but not in an anime adaptation of something i am supposed to take seriously.
this could have been a legitimate drama if it had ended after tomoya reunites with ushio and his father. heck, add him falling in love with kyou who is now ushio's kindergarten teacher, if you must have a romantic happy ending. but not this. this confirms what i thought when watching the prequel, that it was all manipulative fakery, carefully crafted for maximum tear extraction at the expense of authentic emotion. if i owned the DVD set i'd be throwing it against the wall.
clannad is as fake about family as its name -- which is NOT irish for family. "clann" is irish for family. clannad is the name of an irish band and stands for "clann as dobhar" (family from dore), which means the writer of this opus didn't even do any damn research on something as important as the name of the story. that's all par for the course; where the metal meets the road the families in clannad don't talk when they should, don't act when they should, and are not at all what family can be when it tries its best.
